ently.
"I'll never be better till I see Laurence again."

"Oh, don't be giving yourself up like that," said the Doctor, cheerily;
"we won't let you die yet awhile."

"I won't die," she answered, gravely, "till the same day that Laurence
died: the 13th of September. There's no fear of me till then."

She looked tired, and her visitors left, the Doctor telling his new
acquaintance as they walked down the lane what a strong, bright girl
this had been till a year ago, when her brother had died of consumption.
From that day her health had begun to fail, the winter had brought a
cough, and Easter had found her kept to her bed. It was a hopeless case,
he thought, though she might linger for a time.

"Indeed, and she's a loss to us," put in old Mrs. Capel, who had now
joined them, having returned from her pursuit of the predatory pig. "She
was a great one for slavin', and as strong as any girl on the estate,
but she did be frettin' greatly after her brother, and then she got cold
out of her little boots that let in the water, and there she's lying
now, and couldn't get up if all Ireland was thrusting for it."

The mist had now turned to definite rain, and Louise Eden accepted "a
lift" on the Doctor's car, as he had to pass her gate in going home. His
shyness soon wore off as the girl talked to him with complete ease and
simplicity, first of some of his poor patients, then of herself and her
interest in them.

She was half-Irish, she said, her mother having come from this very West
Country, but she had lost both her parents early and been brought up at
school and with English relatives. Lately her brother, or rather
step-brother, having been made an R.M. and appointed to the Cloon
district, had asked her to live with him, and this she was but too happy
to do. She had always longed to give her life to the poor and especially
the Irish poor, of whose wants she had heard so much. She had even
thought of becoming a deaconess, but her friends would not hear of it,
and she had been obliged to submit herself to their conventional
suburban life. "But here at last," she said, "I find my hands full and
my heart also. These people welcome me so warmly and need so much, the
whole day is filled with work for them; and now that you have come, Dr.
Quin," she added, smiling at him, "I can do so much more, for you will
tell me how to work under you and to nurse your patients back to health
again."

It was almost dark when they came to th